Standards

Standard. This document defines the format used by the Open Language Archives Community
OLAC for the interchange of metadata within the framework of the
Open Archives Initiative OAI. The metadata set is based on the
complete set of Dublin Core metadata terms DCMT, but the format
allows for the use of extensions to express community-specific qualifiers.

Recommendations

Recommendation. This document expresses the consensus of the Open Language Archives Community on best
practice recommendations for language resource description using the OLAC metadata
standard OLAC-Metadata.

Recommendation. This document specifies the codes, or controlled vocabulary, for the Discourse Type
extension of the Type metadata element. These codes describe the content of a resource
as structured in such a way as to represent a particular type of discourse.

Recommendation.
This document specifies the codes, or controlled vocabulary, for the Linguistic Data Type extension of the DCMI Type element. These codes describe the content of a resource from the standpoint of recognized structural types of linguistic information.

Recommendation. This document specifies the codes, or suggested vocabulary, for the 'linguistic' value of the xsi:type attribute of the OLAC Subject element. These codes describe the content of a resource as about a particular subfield of linguistic science, or about the level of linguistic structure which is the primary concern of a given subfield.

Recommendation. Role is an attribute of both the Creator and Contributor elements. (Please note that Dublin
Core now discourages the use of the Creator element, recommending that all Role information be
associated with Contributor elements.) This document specifies the controlled vocabulary of the
Role attribute used by OLAC. This attribute specifies the functional role of the entity named
in the creation of a given resource.

Notes

Draft Implementation Note. Documents a verb, Query, supported by the CGI interface to the OLAC Aggregator. The purpose of the verb is to support selective harvesting of OLAC metadata, such as would be needed in order to offer a specialized service based on OLAC metadata. The request returns a ListRecords response; its parameters support the construction of an SQL query to specify the subset of records to harvest.

Proposed Informational Note. In addition to the olac metadata format, the
OLAC Aggregator OLACA serves records in two
other formats: olac_display and
oai_dc. This document provides the
specification for how an OLAC record is transformed
into these other two formats. The first of these
formats is a reader-friendly view of OLAC metadata
that may be used by someone building a service that
displays OLAC metadata; it translates coded values
into their human-readable equivalents. The latter
format is the standard format used by the Open
Archives Initiative (OAI) for metadata interchange.
Thus the OLAC Aggregator
serves as a crosswalk that transforms the
olac format records supplied by OLAC's
participating archives to oai_dc format
records that can be used by the wider OAI
community.

Draft Informational Note. This document lists third-party metadata extensions that are known
to be compatible with the OLAC Metadata standards. They have not attained the status of OLAC Recommendations, but data providers are encouraged to try any that seem relevant to the nature of their collection.

Draft Implementation Note. Documents a service named Viser, hosted on the OLAC web site, that allows language resource sites to post services based on OLAC metadata without having to implement a conventional service provider. Viser works in conjunction with the query facility of the OLAC Aggregator to selectively harvest OLAC metadata and then provide HTML displays of records that match a query. The service returns an XML document with processing instructions to invoke an XSL stylesheet and set certain display parameters; the actual rendering to HTML happens in the client's browser.